1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a performance management system, an information processing system, and an information collecting method in the performance management system. More specifically, the present invention relates to a technique for preventing congestion that may occur in a management server when the management server collects management information on an information processing system from multiple agents.
2. Related Art
In general, in performance management of a system such as a storage system provided with various resources, agents are provided for the respective resources such as a management target apparatus and software that operates on the management target apparatus; and a management apparatus (a manager) acquires information (management information) on configurations or performances of the resources from these agents, and figures out the system conditions based on the acquired management information to perform appropriate control.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open Publication No. 2004-236030 discloses that a management server (a manager) collects management information from agents implemented in management target apparatuses by using techniques including SNMP (simple network management protocol)/MIB (management information base)/RMON (remote network monitoring), and thereby performs actions such as display of a configuration diagram, determination of a point of failure, display of events issued from the management target apparatuses, real-time monitoring of an operating state of the management target apparatuses, traffic overloads and the like, display of a graph, and monitoring of states of traffic loads and packet losses by comparison with thresholds or by other operations.
Management of loads on the management server is a key issue when the management server is configured to collect management information from multiple agents as described above. Specifically, since transmission of the management information from an agent to the management server can take place at any timing, simultaneous and intensive transmission of the management information from multiple agents may cause input/output congestion, and this may result in a processing delay, a management information loss and other failures in the management server.